


Bleeding Edges Of The Mind

by torianmist



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Tony Angst, Tony-centric, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torianmist/pseuds/torianmist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He has nothing else to give. Nothing else they can take from him. Naked and raw, physically and emotionally. He gives up."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleeding Edges Of The Mind

The sun is warm as Tony enters the mansion garden. Heat radiates an aura around his light starved skin and he turns his face instinctively skyward. Scanning the verdant surroundings a small smile curves his mouth as his gaze alights on the old gnarled tree. Walking barefoot, a dissonant silence envelopes him. The skyline of New York, as familiar to him as his own features shimmers and retreats in a filmy gauze. Stumbling, he reaches out and the soft skin of his knuckles shreds as the tree, so very there and present in his childhood melts and elongates with his touch, dark brown and roughened bark stretching into the smooth, cool red of his armor.. Falling to his knees, Tony rubs bleeding hands over his eyes and rolls to his back. The sun dappled leaves hanging corona like above him weaving in a rapidly growing breeze serve to steady and ground him and he rubs his bruised hands absently against the worn denim covering his thighs and his eyes flutter closed. 

Time passes and gentle touches to his face, as soft as the brush of his mother's fingers over his hair when he was young, cause his eyes to open. The sun has fully receded and a grey nebulous cloud is forming on the horizon, tendrils of smoke reaching toward him like opaque fingers. Each one is a buried memory. Pushing himself up against the metallic gold and red trunk of the tree, he reaches out to grasp at the leaves falling steadily now to blanket his legs. Brittle and dead, the five pointed leaf drains color as he touches it and the sky shrieks with flame as he looks down. Paper curling at the edges, ashy and blackened. The five points of the leaf bleeding into the surreal edges of a star outline. Burned, discarded blueprints sit in his hand. Blue like the deepest of seas, so honest and real, so present. He knows that color. A voice at once dear and familiar and yet contorted into a grotesque caricature screams his name and Tony throws himself back. The trunk dissolves and he is falling. Red surrounds him in color and sound, images assault his very being and he slams his eyes shut, tears forcing their way through his lashes and he braces himself for an impact. 

An arm heavy and thick, wraps itself around his chest ending his drop. Tony opens his mouth on a soundless scream as fetid breath covers his face like a death mask and a silent voice infiltrates his mind resonant and low.

“And the prodigal son returns.”

Tony sucks in a breath. Every nerve in his body is on fire. Every instinct he has is telling him to 'go!'  
Kicking violently back with his feet, he encounters nothing but air. Where Obadiah's legs should be is nothing but spectral film. But the arm, the arm across his chest is real, so real. The arm around him tightens and Tony coughs trying to draw in air but instead pulls in sand and ash. Movement below him draws his eye as skeletal fingers tangle around his wrist and he is dimly aware of blinding pain in his arm, twisted at an unnatural angle and hanging limply by his side. Wrenching his body violently, he catches a flash of a deep ruby red. A large stone set in tarnished gold glints in the reflective kaleidoscope of the harsh colors painting the landscape of feral thought that surrounds him. A voice he will never forget, but forms no words causes him to thrust his head down in a futile effort to hide and Tony flashes on water and the inability to breathe, the echo of a decisive order to have a missile built by the next day permeating his skull only to be forgotten as he views the platform of decaying corpses and skeleton's that he stands upon. Bile rises in his throat as the words.'Your loyal customers and their collateral damage' ring in his mind like a tolling bell. Insidious coiling around his torso. his naked torso, brings him back and as Obadiah's fingers trail along the tender flesh of his inner thigh and up over his bared stomach on their way to the reactor in his chest, childhood memories and nightmares buried so deep inside himself he had almost believed them to be untrue paint images across his closed eyes and Tony goes limp. He has nothing else to give. Nothing else they can take from him. Naked and raw, physically and emotionally. He gives up.

Time passes. Tony stirs as the fingers at his chest reach their destination and stroke over the reactor that keeps him alive. Some instinct for survival residing in him reacts without direct input from him and he throws his arm to the side in an effort to get free. The tug on his forearm is hardly worth his attention but he looks up to see wires, thick and solid like a manifestation of veins stretching from him far above and beyond his line of vision. Electrical wires tethering him and powering him even as he concedes the fight. He uncurls a fist and a flash of blue steals his attention. So blue and so familiar. He hears a faint echo of what he thinks is his name but before he can place it the sludge of voice next to him distracts him. Fleshless mouth dragging over his ear.

“Not the son we wanted Tony. Always a disappointment.” 

Tears form in Tony's eyes and he blinks them away. Pulling harder on his captor to free himself.

Bright, blinding light and Tony sees an ethereal outline of a man. The only thing he latches on to is the blue. That blue. The light fragments and re-coalesces into his father holding Steve. Steve is limp and unresponsive in Howard's arms and Tony surges forward screaming Steve's name only to be pulled back into Obadiah's grip.

The curl of a cruel smile on Howard's face is nothing new, the hate spewed from his mouth demonizing his child is nothing new but the way he holds Steve, Tony's Steve close to his chest is. Howard runs his hand along Steve's face, brushing fingers over the unconscious man's lips and he smiles looking Tony directly in the eyes.

“Pay attention Anthony” Howard commands. “You don't deserve him.”

Tony feels the energy pulse through the cables attached to his wrist, feels the reactor in his chest give an answering surge of energy to his white hot rage and as Tony raises his hand in a gesture as natural to him as breathing, Steve opens his eyes. Eyes as blue and deep as the sky lock onto Tony's and he calls Tony's full given name as Howard produces a flame and destroys his surrogate created son and his natural born one in one action and Tony's world goes dark as he is pulled up through the surreal dream-scape by the force of his own name.

He sucks in a lungful of air, his eyes flying open as he bolts upright into the growing dawn of his bedroom. Smacking away hands that are rubbing gently at his hip, he scrabbles back to brace himself against the headboard needing something solid and real to ground him. Steve is a slowly solidify figure next to him. Heavy and real.

“Tony. Tony. Anthony.” 

Steve's voice rises, panic more than evident in his tone. He reaches out to place a hand on Tony's knee and Tony instinctively kicks him away.

Tony scrubs his hands over his face wiping away the tears and gasps.

“Don't call me that.”

Steve sits back and murmurs softly.

“I've been calling your name but you wouldn't wake up. That was a bad one.”  
Tony barks out a ragged broken sob.

“Could say that.”

Silence hangs heavy as a shroud between them and Tony so desperately wants to reach out, to reassure himself that he is wanted here.

“Can I touch you?” Steve's voice is tentative and quiet.

Tony raises his face and locks his eyes to Steve's blue. So blue. The color of honesty and purity.

“Where?” Tony asks shakily, hand coming up to unconsciously cover his chest.

Steve raises his hand to his own face.

“Here?” He asks softly and Tony feels something inside him break open. He nods slightly closing his eyes, breathing still ragged.

Sheets rustle and slide as Steve leans in and runs a finger lightly over Tony's forehead, across his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose to rest on the curve of his cheek. Heat radiates off him as he moves in closer.

“Look at me Tony.”

Tony's eyes flutter open. He cuts his eyes quickly to Steve and then settles his gaze just beyond him.  
Steve places his palm under Tony's chin and raises his face, saying again quietly.

“Look at me.”

Tony turns his eyes to unwavering blue as Steve's thumb rubs gently at his cheek.

“When you're ready, you'll tell me.”

It isn't a request and Tony nods, leaning into Steve's enveloping heat allowing himself to be pulled down into his arms.

“I've got you babe. Now breathe with me.” Steve whispers. “Just breathe.”


End file.
